Chamber and committees

Salmon has become synonymous with Scotland, at home and the world over, whether it be through idyllic scenes of fly fishing for wild salmon on our rivers or from enticing restaurant menus that feature farmed salmon as part of our world-famous food and drink offer. During the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee’s follow-up inquiry, it was important that we kept sight of the significant value of our salmon to our economy and our communities. However, it was also imperative that we took a hard look at where improvements needed to be made, to protect not only the welfare of our fish and our planet but the reputation and longevity of our industry.

I will focus on three areas that are important to me: wrasse and lumpfish cleaner fish, the need for species-specific legal welfare standards for farmed fish and for wild-caught fish that the industry uses as tools in such settings, and the interaction of farmed and wild salmon.

The committee’s report makes several recommendations on wild wrasse fishery, which is closely associated with the salmon aquaculture sector. I fully support the recommendations on data, transparency and a fisheries management plan. Our wrasse fishery is lightly regulated, but those regulations require a closed season between 1 December and 30 April each year. The marine directorate has said that the closed season should align with the spawning season, which is best practice for sensitive fisheries such as wrasse. However, in response to a freedom of information request, the directorate has also pointed to a detailed paper on the subject, which was produced in 2017 by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, or CFAS, which sits within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Entitled “Northern European Wrasse—Summary of commercial use, fisheries and implications for management”, it shows that the Scottish wrasse fishery is almost precisely open when it should be closed and closed when it should be open.

Salmon aquaculture uses five wrasse species, three of which—corkwing, rock cook and cuckoo wrasse, which are easy for me to say—spawn exclusively during the open season. The Scottish fishery also opens for four of the five months when the two other species—goldsinny and ballan wrasse—spawn. However, that is not the case in English waters. For example, in response to that report, the Devon & Severn Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority closed its wrasse fishery between April and mid-July to ensure maximum protection.

There are real risks here. Not only are wrasse economically important to the salmon industry, but, as we have heard, they protect crucial habitats for spawning species, both commercial and non-commercial. There will be economic and ecological consequences if wrasse stocks should crash, so I therefore hope that the minister can confirm that future management of the fishery will respect the closed season indicated by the 2017 CFAS paper.

I encourage the Scottish Government to fully consider the committee report’s recommendations to bring forward additional regulation and official guidance under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 in order to set specific baseline standards for the welfare of farmed fish. Although I appreciate that there is an industry code of practice and an RSPCA Assured scheme that producers can sign up to, farmers raising terrestrial animals must comply with species-specific requirements under law, and additional detailed guidance is published for most species that describes how farmers can not only meet their legal responsibilities but go beyond that minimum to achieve higher welfare.

Farmed fish are offered no such legal protection beyond not having to suffer unnecessarily. I know that there has been significant investment by the industry to grapple with persistent welfare issues of farmed salmon and cleaner fish, but I believe that it is imperative and morally just that those animals are protected in the same way that we protect those that reside on the land.

As someone who resides right beside a river that was once full of wild salmon—Tim Eagle said the same thing—I urge the Government to publish an updated timetable for the implementation of the agreed recommendations from the salmon interactions working group. When asked about the interactions between farmed and wild salmon and the delays in implementing the working group’s recommendation, the cabinet secretary told the committee that she recognises the

“criticism that the progress is not fast enough”.—[Official Report, Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, 13 November 2024; c 44.]

Stakeholders such as Open Seas have also stated that the open-net pens used in the marine stage of salmon farming can lead to impacts on the marine environment, with sensitive habitats and species being of particular concern. Open-net pens allow the free exchange of water but also allow discharges from the pens, including waste, chemical treatment and sea lice, and can lead to escaped salmon interacting with our wild and endangered salmon species. We should remember that wild salmon is a red endangered species. We do not want to lose that iconic species, which draws many tourists from around the world.

Closed-pen technology could directly address those concerns by minimising environmental impact and protecting Scotland’s wider marine ecosystems, fisheries and tourism industry. I ask the Government, as other colleagues have asked, to urgently work with the industry to innovate in that area. Companies are ready to start deploying such technology. Given our rapidly warming waters, which we have heard about, it is crucial. Industry can do as much as it can with the technology that it has today, but that does not address the fact that our waters are getting warmer, and industry will have to contend with that. Closed-pen technology could help in that respect.

To ask the Scottish Government what work it is carrying out with local authorities regarding the wellbeing of school pupils and staff. (S6O-04472)

Those contributions have been really helpful in setting a marker for us to think about the issues. We do not think about food security in such terms, so that is pretty helpful.

I am not sure, convener. I think that Tim Eagle is next.

Dr Vera Eory mentioned soil passports. That would be a good way of thinking about how we baseline and understand what soil health in an agricultural business looks like. I absolutely get that there is a set of principles for regenerative agriculture and that it will be, and look, different in each place. Nonetheless, how do we actually empower farmers? David McKay talked about farmers being able to look at their phone and see all the data on soil health on their farm and what is working well. Might a soil passport fit in with that kind of thinking?

Good afternoon. I want to spend a wee bit of time speaking about regenerative farming. We have danced around that this morning, although a lot of your answers have alluded to it. One of the very first speeches that I made when I came to this place was on the subject. It is new to a lot of people, but I learned about it way back in the early 1990s from taking environmental science courses in Canada. We were starting to think about dust bowls, compacted soils and the very real threats at that time.

How do we make the concept of regenerative farming more accessible to our farmers in Scotland and enable them to understand it? Knowledge exchange is important. David McKay talked about that, and I have been out on a farm in my area with the Soil Association to see it in practice. As I come from Ayrshire, you will not be surprised to know that my grandfather was a dairy farmer and I have friends who are dairy farmers. A lot of really interesting things are happening down there, such as the First Milk co-operative, which has a regenerative farming programme and is rewarding farmers with financial benefit for producing soils that are healthy by, for example, ensuring that there is clover and that the swards are healthy. There are also individual farms such as Mossgiel Organic Farm, which is working towards net zero and is able to gain public procurement contracts because it is recognised that the farm offers a valuable, nutritious product.

How do we make the move to regenerative farming accessible and well understood for those who are at the soil face, so to speak? I do not think that we do that at present. I am also concerned about the tier 4 issue. Is there enough resource around that? How do we address that?

David, will you start, as you have touched on that aspect already?

Is it the case that, if the move towards sustainable and regenerative agriculture is done correctly, it will not necessarily impact on businesses’ long-term profitability if they are supported along the way to get themselves to that position? Even if we consider reducing herd sizes and reducing consumption, if that is done on a whole-farm basis and a societal basis that drives the kind of cultural change that we know that we have needed for the past 30 or 40 years, it should not affect profitability or our food security in Scotland.

The committee has been concerned about how we ensure that we get the right tree in the right place and that we think about trees on farms as something that is beneficial, as opposed to the argument that comes back to saying, “We can’t eat a tree.” That is a part of the whole thing that we need to consider.

That is something that we really need to bottom out, because a lot of people who are doing regenerative farming will say that they believe that they are sequestering a lot more carbon than their farms are emitting. We are on a journey to try to catch up with that kind of carbon auditing. It will be helpful once we get to the position where we understand that clearly and collectively.

What is social work’s perspective?

Unless any of the other witnesses has any thoughts on that, I will stop there. Thank you.